


Victims of Circumstance - 17/20 – Strangers and Destiny

by motsureru



Series: Victims of Circumstance [17]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-26
Updated: 2008-02-26
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:14:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsureru/pseuds/motsureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Season 1 and Season 2. This is a <b><span>sequel</span> </b>to <i>Any Other Night</i>, which is a <b><span>sequel</span></b> to <i>Broken Glass. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Victims of Circumstance - 17/20 – Strangers and Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> An enormous amount of thanks to [](http://etoile-dunord.livejournal.com/profile)[**etoile_dunord**](http://etoile-dunord.livejournal.com/), who edits my commas and makes me happy doing it.

**Teaser _:_**   _That was when Mohinder’s voice in the back of his mind had silenced the buzz of excitement over finally getting to kill the man that had eluded him twice before, once with the inopportune result of nearly killing Sylar.  
  
_

.17Strangers and Destiny

 

The idea of seeing Peter Petrelli seemed like an excellent one at first. It seemed like a spectacular opportunity beyond Sylar’s wildest dreams. It seemed that way until the first hour into his flight. That was when Mohinder’s voice in the back of his mind had silenced the buzz of excitement over finally getting to kill the man that had eluded him twice before, once with the inopportune result of nearly killing Sylar. He supposed he owed Peter Petrelli and that Asian friend of his something; were it not for that injury, he would never have ended up in Mohinder’s life again, in Mohinder’s bed, in Mohinder’s arms. Did he owe the man his life, in that regard?

Each time that Sylar struggled in his mind to reason through the discrepancy between what he thought and what Mohinder would surely think, Sylar found himself with panic surging in his chest again; fear over where Mohinder was, who had taken him, and what they might be doing with his lover. As much as Sylar felt fear, he also felt murder creeping again beneath his flesh. Sylar vowed that Sebastian, were he truly still alive, and the other Company members responsible, would pay dearly for their trespasses. With Mohinder, Sylar would paint a future just for the two of them in the blood of their enemies.

With Orléans and Cercottes behind him, Sylar felt uneasy. Being on the run had been one thing, but being on the offensive was quite another, now that Mohinder’s safety was on the line. He didn’t trust Bennet’s helping hand, and though the Haitian had put his trust in Sylar not to kill Peter Petrelli, the fact that the Haitian had kept the man’s survival a secret from even Bennet put neither of them in very high, trustworthy standing with Sylar. Though Sylar hated to trust Peter Petrelli as well (even if he was a Peter Petrelli with no memory of their previous encounters), there was a good chance that Peter might end up being his only dependable ally. Who else besides Peter would be void of personal ambitions in this fight? The very thought left a bitter taste in Sylar’s mouth.

“I’m looking for a man named Peter Petrelli.” The phrase had to be repeated over and over again, several times with mild threats involved and descriptions of a black-haired American with large, weepy eyes. Sylar found the fealty of the Irish irritating and confounding; in spite of the Haitian’s information, he spent the better part of three hours hunting down Peter Petrelli’s whereabouts all over Cork. By the time Sylar was given the name ‘Wandering Rocks Pub,’ he found his patience dwindling at best.

Sylar pushed open the old wooden doors to the pub, holding back his frustration. Inside, he could see two people immediately: a woman pulling stools off the countertop and a man leaning over the bar, wiping it down with a towel. As Sylar took a step inside and got a clearer look at the pair, he let out a sigh of relief. Finally.

The girl, all slender figure and brown wavy hair, was the first to turn around and glance towards Sylar. She gave a brief smile. “Sorry friend, we’re not quite open. Check back in an hour.” Her accent was thick, and Sylar could tell right away that she was no stranger to this country like Peter was. 

“I’m not here for a drink,” Sylar replied with a shake of his head. He stopped at the end of the bar, looking between the girl and Peter’s shoulders as the man wiped. Sylar’s eyes settled finally on Peter. “I’m here to see Peter Petrelli.”

The man at the bar stopped and slowly he turned around, looking at Sylar with that infuriating, perpetually confused gaze. Sylar could see that Peter had never really changed. Even without his memories, even with what appeared to be a haircut (one that had grown back out into its familiar, though slightly shorter, cut), Peter Petrelli still carried that air of unawareness of the world around him. That constant search for something unknown but with the inevitable inability to discover it hung over the young man like a cloud.

“What do you want with Peter Petrelli?” Peter asked cautiously, tossing the rag in his hand over his shoulder.

Sylar watched his expression for a moment, gauging his reaction, and then finally allowed his face to break into the mask of a warm smile. “Peter!” he walked forward and reached out as if to embrace the man in a friendly hug. “Peter, I’ve been searching for you for ages!”

Peter took a step back to avoid the embrace, expression twisting in bewilderment. “Do I know you? Who are you?” Peter looked Sylar up and down, confusion apparent. “What do you want?”  
Letting his hands drop, Sylar glanced between Peter and the woman who was now moving to stand at his side. She touched a hand to his upper arm, but her eyes remained on the stranger.

“My name is Sylar, Peter. Don’t you remember?” Sylar asked in his most earnest voice, resting a palm against the wooden countertop. “I came here because someone- a friend of ours- is in danger. I need your help, Peter,” Sylar repeated the name to him as if it might solidify and validate his place in Peter’s long-forgotten life. Even a lie needed a convincing beginning.

Peter shook his head slowly. “Sylar… I don’t know any Sylar.” What sort of a name was ‘Sylar’? “I don’t… know anything about my past.” 

The woman’s hold seemed to tighten on his arm, and she eyed Sylar warily in Peter’s stead. “Look, I don’t know what you’re sellin’, stranger, but you’d better just come out with it,” she stated, bringing hard eyes to Sylar, more menacing, it seemed, than Peter was. Sylar found that, in that instant, even though she was irritating to him for getting in the way, Sylar admired her courage. He appreciated her fire inside to protect what was important to her, so much like what Mohinder often held in his eyes.

“Caitlin,” Peter spoke her name like a punctuation, holding out a hand. He kept his gaze on Sylar, looking him over again as though his image might hold the answer. “Look, …Sylar, I don’t know who you are. And I don’t remember who I was. But you’re the first person to come looking for me who knows my name, and it’s a little suspicious, you know? So how do I know you’re not pulling one over on me?” Peter thought of the family betrayal that had happened to Caitlin’s brother some months back, of the people who stood opposed to them now who might want to get at him, an outsider, for what he’d done in revealing their treachery. 

Sylar considered for a long moment how to answer that. How, in all the suspicious circumstances he had arrived in and all those he was about to create, could he make this man trust him? The answer became all too obvious.

Turning his hand over on the counter so that it faced the two, Sylar’s eyes narrowed, focusing in on an upside down glass sitting on the counter next to Peter. Effortlessly, Sylar drew the heavy mug towards him with his mind, glass dragging against the wood. Both Peter and Caitlin stared wide-eyed as the item shot across the bar and hit Sylar’s palm with a resounding smack. Sylar lifted his eyes alone to the man, a smile drawing slowly across his lips. “We were friends Peter, don’t you remember?”

“You…” Peter stepped forward, out of Cailtin’s grasp. “How did you do that? How did you-”

“Know that you can do it too?” Sylar smiled, tilting his head. “I know because I taught it to you,” Sylar said confidently. “And you and I… we can do much more, Peter. I bet you know that, too.”

“How do you know me?” Peter said a bit breathlessly. He pulled over a stool and pushed it towards Sylar, then grabbed one for himself. Sylar sat down, and Peter followed, eyes never leaving him. “How can you- can I- do these things? How did you find me?”

That was a question Sylar hadn’t been entirely prepared to answer. He couldn’t very well admit the entire story of the Haitian and the Company to Peter now, or even most of it, yet. So he opted to pull in what few facts that had been revealed about this man over the months from his and Mohinder’s chats.

“Your brother hired me to find you, Peter. He knew how close we were,” Sylar replied smoothly. “You’ve been missing for months. I’d given up trying to find you, and he almost had too, but he insisted we try one last time.”

“My brother?” Peter glanced back at Caitlin, and then motioned towards the other room, tossing a soft word or two her way. She disappeared with a small jog through the doorway. “You know my brother? What’s his name?”

Feeling Peter sink into his web easily, Sylar smiled an amicable smile, relaxing a little. “Nathan. Nathan Petrelli. He was a politician. You don’t remember him, either?” Sylar asked, raising an eyebrow.

Caitlin returned a second later, placing a wooden box in Peter’s hands. Peter opened the box and reached inside, pulling out the contents. He handed a photograph to Sylar. “This, is this my brother? It is, isn’t it?” he asked.

Sylar took the sheet and looked it over, taking in the details of a happy wedding shot, two nice brothers in nice clothes with nice smiles, a nice future ahead of them. Sylar quirked a smile, himself. “Yes, that’s Nathan.” He brought his gaze back up to Peter, feeling a bit anxious for time, but knowing he had to play this cool and easy to not intimidate the young man. Then an anomaly in the story occurred to him. “If you don’t remember any of this- Nathan, me… then how do you know your own name? How did you know who you were?”

Peter looked back at the box and gave a short, waning smile. “When they found me, there was a passport. Says I was from New York...” Peter picked it up and handed that over too. “I had that picture, my passport, and plane tickets.”

“Plane tickets?” Sylar asked curiously, turning the items over in his hand.

“Yeah, from New York to Montreal,” Peter nodded. “When no one came looking for me, I thought I’d go and see if there was a clue about me of some kind there. So I went to Montreal. And there was nothing there. Nothing waiting for me. No one knew who I was, so I came back.” He glanced over at Caitlin, giving her a half smile. She squeezed his arm. “I had a life waiting for me somewhere. Wasn’t there. And if no one even came to find me, there must not have been one in New York either. It looked like I was trying to leave that place anyway, right? So… I’ve been here ever since.”

“Your brother thinks you’re dead. –Even though he doesn’t want to, obviously,” Sylar added to his account. “Everyone does. But that’s not important, now, Peter.”

A frown of confusion crossed Peter’s face, then. “I don’t understand. You said there was someone…”

“Doctor Suresh,” Sylar added, feeling his pulse quicken at the thought of Mohinder. “The man who helped us discover these… these abilities. There’s a Company, Peter. A Company in the United States that has been tracking and capturing people like us. Torturing them. The special people,” Sylar began, the seriousness in his eyes the part that may have been the most honest and convincing. “There’s a virus out there, a deadly one that affects people like us. Doctor Suresh has been working to create a cure, but this company wants to use it against us and others like a weapon. I had to find you because you’re powerful, like me. We’re the most powerful out there. You’re someone who can help Doctor Suresh. They took him. Kidnapped him. And you’re the only person who can do this with me.”

Peter held up a hand in protest. “Whoa whoa, slow down… You come here, say you know me, and expect me to run off with you to bust up some company in the States?” Peter gave an empty laugh, looking over at Caitlin. “That sounds crazy, you know. And illegal.” Not that the things he did here in Ireland were any _less_ illegal, but at least they were familiar to him in this life…

Sylar drew in a slow breath through his nose, trying to be patient with the man’s resistance. “I know it sounds too incredible to believe, Peter. But there are things you can do that I can’t- heal, for instance. Fly.” Sylar remembered looking into Peter’s file while Mohinder was gone to Haiti. He hadn’t intended to do anything with the information at the time, but knowledge was power, he had always firmly believed, and his curiosity couldn’t be bound. “I can teach you things, Peter. Everything I can do you can do. I bet you don’t even remember what your true power really is.”

Peter was about to open his mouth, but Caitlin opened hers first.

“Would you give us a moment?” she asked, already starting to tug Peter up from his seat and back towards the other end of the bar.

Sylar held his breath and forced a smile. “Of course.”

Peter nodded to Sylar, standing up and following the lead of Caitlin’s hand into the back room. She pulled him through the doorway and around the counter, just out of sight.

“Are you serious, Peter?” Caitlin asked, expression worried and accent thickened by it. “I mean, are you really going t’ believe everything he says? This sounds dangerous. You have no idea who he really is.”

“I have no idea who _I_ really am, Caitlin,” Peter replied, reaching out and resting his hands upon her slim hips as he spoke. He sighed heavily, puffing out his cheeks a bit as he did. “I think I wanna help him. I mean, it’s not like I can’t take care of myself. And if he knows about my past, about these abilities, he might be able to tell me more. I have a brother, Caitlin- I have a brother who’s looking for me, even though he thinks I’m dead…” A softer, more troubled expression crossed Peter’s features. There was a poignant feeling somewhere deep inside when he said those words, but he couldn’t place it. Couldn’t fully comprehend just how much they should have meant to him.

“I’m worried about you, Peter. About what could happen. You don’t know the first thing about this company or this doctor. What if-”

“I think… I think I need to do this, Caitlin,” Peter finally said, almost apologetically. He reached up and slid his fingers into her hair, leaning his forehead affectionately to hers. “I tried to go to my past and I couldn’t find it… but now it’s come to me. And someone needs my help. What if I could save a man’s life? What are these powers for, if not to help people? It’s gotta be a sign, right?”

“Peter…” 

“This doesn’t change anything, Caitlin. I love you. And I’m coming back, no matter what I find,” he vowed gravely, leaning in to touch his lips to hers. He heard her sigh softly, but she returned the kiss, touching a hand to his dark hair.

“I expect you back in one piece, you know,” she said with a soft smile. “Or else your friend there is gonna find I have some powers of my own. Us Irish girls take our men seriously.”

Peter gave a soft laugh, petting through Caitlin’s hair once more. “I hope so. Come on,” he motioned towards the door. They stepped out the way they had come, Peter in lead.

Standing from his stool, Sylar watched them approach. He had heard the conversation already, but it was the resolve in Peter’s eyes that gave him a surge of hope for his cause. He hadn’t felt a thrill quite like this since he had last anticipated Mohinder’s lips, and the thought filled him with an uneasy excitement inside. Mohinder’s rescue was assured, now. It was only a matter of time before his revenge on Sebastian took place and he could steal Mohinder away again beyond the dreadful, treacherous grip the Company had on them. Peter’s eyes had always held a sort of imbecilic hope to Sylar, but today Sylar felt sure that, in spite of his duplicity, the hope was in his own eyes.

When Peter came close, Sylar reached out and placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder, looking seriously into his eyes. “I know this is a hard decision, Peter. But I don’t have all the gifts you do, and I know I can’t do this alone. I came here because I need you and you need me. I can tell you about yourself… about your abilities… about why we have them, about others… I just need you to trust me. And to help me to help Doctor Suresh. We were meant to do this together, Peter. We were meant to stand, side by side, in the face of great danger. We have before. It’s destiny that we do it again.” 

Sylar neglected to tell him, however, which sides they stood on in the past.

“To save a man’s life?” Peter asked, looking up at Sylar.

“To save the world, Peter,” Sylar smiled.


End file.
